How We Shot It | Underexposure with Flash

As many of you know, the founders of SLR Lounge are also full time wedding photographers.

As we’re in the middle of wedding season, we’re coming back to the studio each week with images that have some sort of educational value to our readers. So we decided to start a series of posts called “How We Took It.” Rather than comprehensive tutorials like you might see elsewhere on our site, think of these as quick inspiration for your weekend shoots. Let us know what you think in the comments. Do you want more of these types of posts? Is this enough info for each post?

We noticed the dramatic clouds behind our couple. For this composition, we had to shoot from just below the rocks. We used the sunlight as our rim light and used a Nikon SB-700 Flash (triggered with Pocket Wizards) at 1/1 power for our main light about 5-8 feet from the couple. We had our lighting assistant toss the veil up in the air for a dramatic effect. Our settings are 1/200 Shutter Speed at F/7.1 and ISO 100. we are underexposing somewhere between 1 and 2 stops to bring out the background. Since we are shooting from below, a look into the camera would not have been the best pose. So we chose a kissing shot (along with a few other dramatic poses) for the scene. In our composition, we found the spot between the clouds, the trees, and the rock where there would be no distracting objects in the area immediately surrounding our couple. We hope you enjoy!

Gorgeous pic & thanks for sharing! I too like a quick snippet like this, no need for war & peace, and it was short and too the point! People need to learn through action anyway IMHO, but this is inspirational and helpful. More please! :-)

As you can see from some of the comments here, though (and everywhere else on the web), some folks aren’t going to be satisfied with anything less than a paint-by-numbers, full-length, let’s-put-a-week-into-writing-and-editing-it tutorial no matter how you title or classify it. Don’t let ’em get you down — a new idea caught in a flash, published relatively frequently, is worth at least as much as (and I’d actually say more than) a “what button to push when” major article created when time permits. It only takes a modicum of experience (and paying attention to your results) to turn a technical sketch like this into a workable field or studio technique; not everything needs to be aimed at rank beginners.

Hello Lin, can you provide more details on this shot. The position of the flash. Any light modifier ? I got a question with the remote flash. I have the 5DM3 and the new Canon 600ex-rt, do I still need to get pocket wizards to trigger it remotely ? Or does the 5DM3 can send radio signal to the flash?

love it- would you have the flash head zoomed out or in? and did u have the wide angle spread panel down, shoot through umbrella or naked?
scuse all the questions- i really wanna be able to do this and have been looking at a few tutorials- will be testing it out tomorrow- exciting ; )

Nice addition to all the LR4 training and preset tutorials I’ve been following. Did you use any modifiers on the flash? looks like bare flash on the couple, with nice natural ambient light hitting the veil. thx and keep em coming!